Facebook Helped Boost Organ Donor Registration

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Raising awareness of organ donation on social media websites can
help boost donation rates, according to a new study.

Facebook began allowing users to make their status as organ
donors visible in their profiles in May 2012, and on the first
day of the change, about 13,000 people in the U.S. registered to
become organ donors —20 times more than the average number of
daily registrations.

The effect of the social media initiative on its first day varied
across states, ranging from a seven-fold increase in
registrations in Michigan, to 100-fold increase in Georgia, the
results showed.

The findings mean that social media might be an effective tool
for
encouraging organ donation, as well as tackling other public
health problems in which communication and education are
essential, the researchers said.

“Our research speaks to on-going efforts to address the
organ availability crisis in the United States. It also
suggests that social media and social networks may be valuable
tools in re-approaching refractory public health problems,” said
study researcher Dr. Andrew Cameron, the surgical director of
liver transplantation at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Today, more than 118,500 people in the U.S. are on the waiting
list for organs, and one name is added to the list every ten
minutes, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. On
average, 18 people die every day waiting for an organ.

Despite countless previous efforts, organ donation rates in the
United States have not grown, while need for transplants has
risen dramatically. Therefore, new efforts are needed to
boost organ donation through public education, the
researchers said.

The Facebook initiative let users add their organ-donation status
to the timeline for their friends and family to see. It also
directed people to the official organ donation registry websites
of their states.

The results showed high registration rates following the Facebook
initiative, compared with usual rates at the Department of Motor
Vehicles (DMV).

The boost may stem from the fact that people are more open to
making decisions about sensitive and difficult topics when they
are in an environment "amongst friends," compared with the
environment at the DMV, the researchers said.

However, after the initial spike, registration rates diminished
over the following weeks. The researchers said this shows more
work is needed to find ways to sustain the increase.

"The next challenge for efforts like the
organ donor initiative will be utilization of social media
applications like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram more
effectively and more durably," the researchers wrote in the
study, which was published today (June 18) in the American
Journal of Transplantation.